


love in the corners of every dream

by aimerai, Annapods



Series: anna's fave pods [36]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Dreamsharing, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Podfic, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-03 17:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21183500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/pseuds/aimerai, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods
Summary: They’re standing in front of an art installation that reminds Max of stained glass, the colours playing over Antoine’s face, reds and blues and yellow mostly. It’s beautiful, but it feels commonplace, the kind of thing you’re so used to looking at that it looks ordinary until you catch it again from a new angle and lose your breath looking at it like a sucker punch to the gut, and Max loses the thread, isn’t sure what he’s talking about anymore.Or: The consequences of being gravitationally bound.+ abridged podfic :: 00:41:46





	1. podfic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abridged podfic. The fic is in the next chapter.

### Podfic files:

**[Internet archive](https://archive.org/details/hrpfloveinthecornersofeverydream):**  
Mp3 and wav files for download and streaming as well as the html text and the cover art in png and svg formats if applicable.  
See the side of the page (“download options”) for the different formats/files and for download. The mp3 file will be under “VBR MP3”.

**[Google drive](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hENBzxHm2HvoR2hEXc34d1hNzjZN5mkc):**  
Mp3 files for download and streaming.

**Browser streaming:**  


### Notes:

* This was recorded for the 2019 Hockey Big Bang.
* Thanks to Aimerai for going along with all my weird experimental ideas!
* The [voice meme answer](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tAda-XJwZnXDQXGnNoWd2z41P3M4tVM7/view?usp=sharing) mentionned in the endnotes. The OMGCPBB pod is named The Soulmates Lie, and the not-pod-together HRPF project is I Don’t Wanna Think Anymore.

### Feedback:

**Contact info:**  
[twitter](https://twitter.com/iamapodperson), [tumblr](http://annapods.tumblr.com/), [dreamwidth](https://annapods.dreamwidth.org/), email (annabelle.myrt@gmail.com). She or they pronouns, I’m Anna or Annapods. 

**What to say:**  
I’d love to hear from you! Be it a single word or emoji, a loooong essay on your thoughts and feelings, recs for things to read or listen to that you think I might like, meta of all kinds, gentle call-outs, an audio recording of your reactions, etc.

Please avoid criticism of the “this is what I think you should do” variety, though, as I’m not looking for a beta and anyway, that’s something that gets negociated first. Unless I directly asked for it in my endnotes, please rephrase that to “this is how I, personally, felt while experiencing this work”, and be ready for me to not take it into account.

I might not answer quickly (as in, it… could take me a few months…) but I will eventually!  
  
---


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, whew, I have so many things to say.  
1) I really recommend you listen to Anna's pod first, because it's a very different story than this and it's wonderful and I cried.  
2) Many, many thanks to everyone who let me fret over this fic at them, especially Heather, Ash, and Maryam who agreed to read this entire thing last minute and also had some truly hilarious commentary along the way  
3) Don't know anything about these boys? That's okay! My intention is to put up a primer one day, but in the meanwhile? [This](https://www.ocregister.com/2017/09/06/ducks-draftees-and-best-friends-maxime-comtois-and-antoine-morand-ready-to-begin-pro-journey/)  
article provides a great summary.  
4) the title comes from a bastardised translation of francis cabrel’s je t’aimais, je t’aime, je t’aimerai

Today Antoine is lying face down in the space between their heads, all fluffy white clouds, springy to the touch. 

Max almost feels like he’s bouncing more than walking, and it makes him giddy and reckless, infected with the atmosphere Antoine’s created. "I don't think this is what people mean when they ask about head in the clouds." 

Antoine groans, but still doesn't turn over.

"Everything okay?" Max asks.

Antoine manages a passable shrug, and now Max is a little worried. "Are you okay?"

"Tired," Antoine mumbles. Well, that explains the clouds. 

"You could've skipped.”

Antoine picks his head up just enough to glare, and Max swallows back his laugh. "Don't look at me like that, mon vieux, it's nice to be wanted." 

Antoine looks up at him again, and he really does look tired. "What I want is for you to stop talking and come here. Possibly also offer up services as a pillow." 

"Clouds not soft enough?" Max asks, even as he knows Antoine made them. 

Max can tell Antoine’s pouting without seeing his face, but he'd hate if Max called it that. Max still gets the message loud and clear, that Antoine misses him, but won’t say it out loud. 

“Can you make furniture out of this stuff?” Max wonders idly, sitting down right by Antoine’s head. 

Antoine moves just enough to rest the side of his head against Max’s knee. “Haven’t tried. Next time, Max, I’m tired.”

He’s almost whining, and Max barely even thinks before his hand is running through Antoine’s hair. “What happened?”

Antoine manages another shrug. “Didn’t sleep well. Just don’t feel good.”

He’s shifting, little by little, till Max can see part of his face. He looks wrung out and subtly unhappy, dark bags under his eyes and mouth downturned. Max knows better than to suggest that Antoine take it easy when it’s advice Max doesn’t follow, but he misses Antoine fiercely, even though Antoine is right here. It’s different in reality and different when they dream closer, even though Max wouldn’t give up these quiet moments for the world. Max sees his own tiredness reflected in Antoine, but they knew what they were signing on for. They knew they were running on borrowed time.

“You didn’t find me, though. I don’t think I even remember what I dreamt about. Why didn’t you come find me?”

“If Dr. Benoit could hear you now,” Antoine says, with a ghost of a smile. It’s not a very happy smile, but Dr. Benoit isn’t a very happy memory.

Max twitches like he always does when their bond specialist is mentioned, but he’s always been much worse about feigning obedience than Antoine. He’s never known how to be quiet about anything, and when it came to their bond he was too loud and obvious about how much it was. The two of them bonded young and far too much, playing hide and seek in each other’s brains with no regard for whose head they were in, communicating telepathically. All of the adults around them thought it would be best for them to go see a specialist, someone who could help with a bond of their intensity, throwing around words and phrases like autonomy and separation of consciousnesses and exaggerated codependency. 

Objectively speaking, Dr. Benoit was probably a perfectly nice lady who had a trial on her hand with two young boys who didn’t care about what she was trying to teach them. Max still hates her. He’s never been able to be objective about their bond. Every hour they spent in her office, preternaturally white, was an hour where Max didn’t get Antoine to himself, where Max had to pretend that Antoine didn’t matter as much as he did. It’s better now than it was back then, but sometimes Max’s head whites out, angry at the cards they’ve been dealt. They’ve spent so much of their lives minimizing what they are to each other. They’ve spent so much time hiding exactly what it is they can do. They’re going to spend the rest of their lives downplaying what they are. Even now, even with time zones as a limiting factor, they can still do so much more with a bond as strong as theirs. It’s harder to speak telepathically but not impossible; they only see each other in their dreams and in the quiet moments where they can focus hard enough to go through, to travel the miles until they’re together at least one way. 

“Stop trying to deflect,” Max says and brushes his fingers across Antoine’s cheekbone.

Antoine’s eyes flutter shut and he leans into the touch for a second. “I hate this. I miss our sleep schedules being together.”

Max feels that in his bones. It shouldn’t be a huge difference, just about four hours, but it feels like too much, pulls them just enough out-of-sync. Antoine’s a light sleeper and wakes up enough that even the moments that they catch can be interrupted, his concentration breaking and breaking their connection more often than not. 

“I know,” Max says helplessly. “I wish you were here.”

Antoine smiles, his eyes crinkling, reaches out, laces their fingers together for thirty seconds. “At least we have this.”

Max is too busy trying to stop feeling his heart in his fingertips to give any kind of coherent response, so he squeezes, quick, and Antoine is smiling up at him, and it’s a relief. It’s been close to a week and they’ve only just managed to communicate for longer than five minute stretches. Max is happy to be up with the Ducks, but he’d rather have Antoine up with him, or at least somewhere closer. “How’s your team?”

“How’s yours?” Antoine counters. “Team is team.”

Team is team, and Antoine is Max’s team first, even if that’s not what he wants to hear about right now.

* * *

_ can i call _

_ one minute _

_ have to get the door _

_ k _

_ now _

“Yesterday was nice,” Max says, first thing on their call, because he tries to be honest with Antoine when he can. There’s only one major secret that he’s keeping, and that’s because it’s—he can’t. He just _ can’t _. He already asks for so much; any more is crossing the line between greed and possession.

“It was,” Antoine says, running a hand through his hair. “I miss you.”

“Me too,” Max says, and closes his eyes to swallow down the melancholy. It’s worse in moments like this, where he can see Antoine but not touch him, but either way, the two of them can’t bear to not be in contact, even if it means racking up ridiculous cell phone charges. “I’m the same as you, mon vieux.”

The part of his head that is just Antoine, that he can feel the edges of, is the same melancholy that he is. They really are so spoiled, so used to having each other as good as right there. 

"Aren't we a sorry sight?" Antoine asks, smiling wistfully. 

For one moment, they shift, draw each other together so that they’re existing in the same loop of melancholy and longing, drowning in it. Antoine pulls them out, like he always does, never letting them linger too long. They are a sorry sight. Maybe they should have listened, maybe they should have put up the curtains and built them into walls. But it took the two of them to end up here, so maybe not, after all. 

“Maybe I should get sent down,” Max jokes, trying to lighten the mood. 

Antoine’s eyes flash dangerously. He does have a temper tucked away somewhere. Max sees it so rarely that he forgot what it was like, an aftertaste like lightning in his bones. “Don’t you dare,” he says, a live-wire of barely controlled fury searching for an outlet. 

“I wouldn’t,” Max reassures. He may be stupid with missing Antoine, but he’s not stupid. “You know me better than that.”

“Still, you scared me," Antoine says, and all that rage evaporates like it was never there at all. "Make the most of your chances. You don't know how many you'll get."

That's exactly why Max doesn't take his chances, in case he doesn't get another one, but he and Antoine are talking about two completely different things. Wants and needs and the line between too much and nothing at all.

* * *

“Your pulse is racing,” Antoine comments, like that’s a normal thing to bring up, but they’re cuddled together in a hammock, out under a brilliant night sky, with more stars than Max has ever seen before. It’s the kind of thing that could be unbearably romantic, but instead it’s just kind of unbearable.

“Why do you even know that?” Max asks, his voice just a little bit on the shrill side. He thinks this is him, and not Antoine, but it might be both of them. Antoine may have a habit of disappearing into the wilderness in the summers, but Max is the one who naps everywhere all the time. 

Antoine squeezes Max’s wrist gently. “My brother showed me how to count a pulse.”

“Why?”

Antoine doesn’t answer the snarky way; he answers Max’s real question. “I wasn’t going to, but it was the right spot. Are you okay?”

It’s just Antoine. It’s just Antoine, who Max has known almost as long as he’s known himself. This shouldn’t be the kind of thing that makes his pulse race, but that initial moment, pressed up behind Antoine, was almost more than he could take. They’ve slept together like boys in Juniors do, but hardly in a context like this, the stars above them, the quiet around them, no one to see whatever they do. 

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Max says. “It was a surprise.”

Antoine makes a small noise, letting go of Max’s wrist, which feels cold, all of a sudden, and then turns so he’s facing Max. This is almost worse, except the expression on Antoine’s face is amused. “You must get such a workout in during horror movies.”

“You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Max lies, obviously, and Antoine knows it too, Max projecting his fondness all the way across their bond. 

The stars seem to twinkle a little brighter, the moon looks a little fuller, a little bit more. Self control is for people that aren’t them, and Max doesn’t know which of them it is, causing the lightest breeze that feels like summer, perfect and ripe for the taking. 

Antoine’s smile is quieter, one that Max sees so rarely but keeps seared into his memory. “Well, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Max’s heart feels like it stops, and he is abjectly so fucking glad that Antoine isn't holding onto his wrist anymore, never mind that his wrist feels cold. “I—_ Antoine— _” 

He can’t breathe with it. He can’t breathe with the way it feels, to love and be loved by this person so much that the universe knew, and led them to each other, made sure they would have each other. Antoine’s smile has widened, Max spilling his feelings all across their heads, unable to control any of it. 

“I know,” Antoine says, in response, gentle as anything, and Max still doesn’t have the words, the ability to say any of it back, much less in the same confident voice Antoine used. 

It’s a little embarrassing, because he’s the talker, he’s the one who never shuts up, and he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to express any of the emotions in him. He’s afraid of saying too much, afraid of making it clear just how ungrateful he is, wanting more than the plenty he’s already been given. He tries frantically to pull back everything he’s spilling; he can’t ask for more, can’t even let Antoine know. 

“I—” he still can’t say anything, it’s too much. He reaches out across the narrow space between them for Antoine’s hand, squeezes three times in quick succession. If he says anything now, it’ll all spill out. He has more sentimentality than common fucking sense.

Antoine’s smile is still the best thing he’s ever seen. Antoine is squeezing his hand right back, leaning in until their foreheads touch, almost uncomfortably intimate. Max’s eyes are crossing just trying to look at him. “You don’t have to try, with me; I know.”

“But you deserve it,” Max croaks, because that much is and always will be true. 

“I deserve you just the way you are,” Antoine says, and it should be a line, it should absolutely be a line, the two of them under a gorgeous night sky, holding hands, staring into each other’s eyes, but it’s just the honest truth. Otherwise they wouldn’t even be here, might even be strangers. It’s still too much, to have it said out loud. 

“You’re sentimental tonight,” Max says, instead of voicing anything else. 

Antoine shrugs, as best he can, and uses their joined hands to vaguely gesture at the sky. 

Max doesn’t laugh at him for it. “So this is what does it for you?”

Antoine’s smirking faintly. “I thought you already knew I was sentimental.”

“There’s a difference between knowing you’re sentimental and being subjected to it,” Max says, because his heart is still hammering, and they are still pressed too close together. 

“It’s never really been like this for us,” Antoine says, voice quiet. “We’re in completely different places, and you’re not as real as I expect you to be, anymore, and I know you feel the same way. This isn’t all me.”

“You’re right,” Max agrees. 

This is one of those times where he doesn’t actually know who started it, whether the responsibility comes to Antoine or to him. He’s not quite sure it matters. 

* * *

Max is a little terrified, picking up the phone. He’s been tasting the sting of Antoine’s emotions, anger like a crackling whip of fire, and if he weren’t sure, the fact that Antoine is calling him, not video-calling him, is a sure sign. 

He holds it up to his ear and hears nothing for a very long moment. He pulls the phone away from his ear to check if he’s even on a call, and when he puts it back up to his ear, he hears the end of what must evidently have been a long, drawn-out sigh. 

There’s another long moment of silence, where Max wonders exactly how long Antoine’s going to yell at him for. 

“Why are you so stupid?” Antoine asks, finally. He doesn’t even sound sad, mostly tired and upset. 

Max is already slow-roasting in guilt, and the real interrogation hasn’t even started. “I didn’t—”

“You kinda did.”

“But I didn’t mean to,” Max says, and even as he says it, he’s not sure that it’s actually true. It’s part of the game; he might have meant to, in the end, but when his head is all hockey, it’s hard to tell.

Antoine makes a disbelieving noise. “You got into a fight with someone who has years of professional experience, and double digits in NHL fights.”

“It’s the game, though,” Max says, softly. It’s easier to deal with Antoine when his anger runs hot, when he’s yelling fit to lose his voice, not when he’s quiet and calm and cold. 

Antoine is quiet again; Max can’t even hear his breathing. “You stress me out.”

It’s Max’s turn to sigh. “I don’t mean to.”

“You never do,” Antoine says, and Max can imagine the melancholic smile on his face, this wry, resigned thing that Max quietly hates with a burning passion. 

“That’s hockey, baby,” Max says, wryly.

“That’s you, baby,” Antoine quips back, and Max can hear the anger there. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I can’t not play.”

Antoine hangs up on him. The text that he gets ten seconds later is succinct. 

_ worried abt you _

_ idiot _

_ it looked bad _

_ <3 _

_ … _

_ <3 _

_ ill try not 2 get in anymore _

_ don’t lie to me _

_ i said try _

_ sorry <3 _

_ i didnt mean to _

_ you never mean to _

_ i really am sorry <3 _

_ don’t _

_ not now _

_ <3 _

* * *

“I really am sorry,” Max says, means it. He doesn’t know quite what Antoine was and is feeling, but there’s turmoil in the back of his head, storm clouds on the horizon, so he has a fair approximation. 

“You really did scare me,” Antoine says. His knees are tucked up against his chest, and his arms are wrapped around them, and he’s not looking at Max, just out at the water. “There was a closeup of your face.”

Max can’t make the jumps to see how all those statements are related, not without running through the parts of Antoine’s head that are still private. “I—you know how it gets, on the ice, sometimes.”

The two of them are interdependent, too fixated on each other, and yet, when they’re playing hockey, they manage to block each other out and forget that they’re bonded. It would be lonely, maybe, except that hockey is a team sport, and Max loves it, all of it. It would be lonely, maybe, but even the longest hockey game can’t be longer than a day.

“I know,” Antoine sighs. “I do know. It doesn’t make it easier, Max.”

“You can still be mad at me.”

“I am still mad at you,” Antoine says, voice just the slightest bit sharp. “I’ll forgive you, just not yet. But I will forgive you.”

“That’s okay,” Max says. It’s not perfect or ideal, but he is still more than okay with it.

“I always do,” Antoine says softly, a self-deprecating smile on his face, like Max hasn’t said a word at all. “You’re what I deserve, after all.”

To anyone else, it would hardly be a ringing endorsement, but Max understands. They get the bad with the good; it's nowhere near the romantic ideal of always understanding, always being perfect to each other. The people who think they are perfect are wrong; they’re not that kind of perfect, just sort of perfect for each other. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even be human. 

“I really am sorry. I didn’t really realise what was happening at first, and then--”

“Yeah, I saw,” Antoine says, and uncurls slightly, bumping his shoulder against Max’s, but still wrapped up pretty tight, self-contained. "Leave me this for now, mon vieux."

"Where are we?" Max asks, instead. His legs are dangling, and the water is a little cold, but still nice, and stretches on for about as far as he can see. 

“Oh, Beauharnois,” Antoine says. “It’s the lake. It’s a good place to think.”

“You put me in your head,” Max says, voice a little funny. This isn’t some place they’ve made for each other or some place they hold in their shared minds; this is a place Antoine inhabits, another little bit of privacy eroded. 

Antoine shrugs.

“Antoine.”

Antoine uncurls a little more, reaching out to take Max’s hand and bring it back to him, studying his knuckles with unparalleled concentration. “I don’t want to be mad at you. You--I never want to be mad at you, but all I can think about is all the ways that could have gone wrong. And when we’re so far away...”

Oh. Max made him feel helpless. There's nothing he can say to make things right, not really, so he reclaims his hand so he can hug Antoine instead, wrapping both arms around him. Antoine melts into it by degrees, tension seeping out of his body, and as he does, the water warms and the sky lightens and it looks like the sun might break out from the clouds soon.

* * *

_be careful_

_ please _

_ or wat ull trade me in 4 someone better _

The phone rings, abruptly, again a voice call rather than a video call. Max is too stunned to do anything but accept. 

“Don’t even joke,” Antoine says, hotly. “That’s so stupid, don’t even fucking joke.”

“It really was a joke.”

“I don’t care; I would _ never. _” 

“Neither would I,” Max says, just as intensely, pushing down the giddiness.

There’s a slight pause, almost imperceptible except Max has grown up with Antoine. “I know that.”

Max isn’t so sure he did. Even as he’s horrified by the thought that Antoine doesn’t actually know that Max would never trade him in, part of him is perversely relieved that Antoine doesn’t know. It would bring him far too close to some unfortunate truths.

"Are you actually going to let me see your face now?" Max asks, hopefully. He knows he’s being a little ridiculous, knows that he and Antoine see each other fairly often, but even in their dreams, Antoine kept his face turned away from Max, not completely, but enough.

"What?" Antoine asks, and Max can already see the way his head must be tilted in confusion. 

"You always hide your face when you're upset with me," Max says, with the kind of conviction he’d use to say that the sky is blue. He may not know much outside of hockey, but he knows this. He always has.

Antoine is silent for a long moment, and when he starts talking again, his voice is pitchy, warbling a little. “I’ll, uh, try not to.”

The video request pops up seconds after that, and Max answers it, grinning. Antoine’s cheeks are still faintly pink, and Max knows his tells. 

“Hi Antoine,” Max says, tilting his head and smiling in the most charming way he can. He knows his voice is too warm, too charmed, but he can’t help it. 

“Guess I should’ve known that you know me better than I know myself,” Antoine says, something that’s almost a smirk on his face. 

“You’re easy,” Max says. “You’ve always been there.”

“And I always will be.”

Max raises an eyebrow, and Antoine rolls his eyes. “I’d give the world for you, Max.”

And that’s the kind of thing that led them to Dr. Benoit in the first place. That’s the kind of thing they’re not supposed to say, the kind of clinginess they’re not supposed to have. Max may have been the obvious dissenter, but that doesn’t mean Antoine wasn’t dissenting. Maybe things would be easier if they’d listened, but Max can’t imagine things any other way, anymore. 

“You’ve really been laying it on thick,” Max says, instead. 

“Have to make sure you know, when you’re so far away,” Antoine says, not quite looking at Max as he says it. “I know you know, but I don’t want you to forget.”

Max’s face is heating up. “We are literally in each other’s heads, Antoine.”

“Not so much, anymore.”

“Liar,” Max says, and now his voice is the one that’s sharp and cutting. “Just because we don’t see each other doesn’t mean I don’t know you’re here. Doesn’t mean you aren’t here, either.”

“If anything happens, it’s going to take me at least fourteen hours to get to you,” Antoine says softly, and Max can almost feel the wave of emotion that prompts in Antoine, something between resignation and hopelessness against the constant backdrop of fierce, unwavering loyalty. 

And of course Antoine has already done the math. Max shivers, hopes Antoine didn’t catch it, but doesn’t hold out hope for it being the case. “I’m not going to break, I swear.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

* * *

It’s snowing all around them, big fat flakes spiralling down from a pale grey sky. 

“Why?” Max asks, even as he turns his face up to track them, sticking his tongue out when he thinks they’re close enough to catch.

“You were thinking about it. You wanted flurries, snow like they show in films. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I know what your thoughts feel like.”

“So you made snow,” Max says, and it may be snowing around them, but he feels warm and untouchable. 

“So I made snow,” Antoine repeats, and Max feels like he should be melting the snowflakes all around him. 

He turns and meets Antoine’s eyes, finally, and Antoine’s smiling at him, looking just the littlest bit proud, hands tucked into his sweatshirt pocket. Something incredibly sappy runs through Max’s mind, wondering how he got so lucky. 

“That’s soft,” is what he ends up saying out loud, because he’s capable of some restraint. 

Antoine’s smile just widens. “Don’t even front, you love it.”

He really does. “So what if we hadn’t met up tonight?”

“I was going to save the thought,” Antoine says, rocking back and forth on his feet. “I thought you’d like it either way.”

Max is so fond of him that it hurts. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’d do the same for me,” Antoine says, raising an eyebrow. “And you’d do it in a heartbeat, Max. In our first year in the Q, you brought me home on the worst nights.”

“And you did the same for me,” Max says, and both of them have matching smiles, caught in nostalgia. The falling snow makes it even more fairytale.

“We really are two of a kind,” Antoine murmurs. He visibly shakes himself after that. “How’s it going out there, anyway?”

“You are literally watching every game,” Max tells him. “Why are you asking?”

“Seeing you during a game does not actually tell me anything about how you are, believe it or not,” Antoine says, desert-dry, and now he’s sitting on a stool, hands still shoved in his sweatshirt pocket, snow still falling. He’s always been good at manipulating their dreamscapes, and when Max looks, there’s a stool for him, too.

“It’s fine,” Max says. “It’s literally the same as when you were here, except you’re not.”

Antoine rolls his eyes. “If I find out you’re lying to me…”

Max isn’t lying. Antoine’s presence really is the main difference, and he still might not be staying up, just getting an extended trial. “I’m just here to soak it all up; they’re probably going to give me all the games and then cut me loose.”

Antoine runs a hand through his hair, coated in snow, and then makes a face, because apparently he managed to forget that he’s been making it snow for Max. “I’d love to have you back, but staying up would be the best thing for you, you know?”

It absolutely would. Still, it would mean less dreaming, and Max isn’t sure how he feels about that. “If I stay up, I’m going to institute mandatory video calls.”

“You already institute mandatory video calls,” Antoine says, laughing. “You called me three times on Monday, and the last time, asked me where your tie was, like I would even know.”

“But you did know,” Max says, because Antoine had picked up laughing and he’d frozen for a minute, before making up an excuse about needing to find his tie. 

“Because you’re predictable,” Antoine says, eyes crinkled. There’s snowflakes settled in his hair again, and the sight of him is especially comforting like this. It could be any winter day they’ve spent together. “You always throw your ties all over your room and forget it.”

Max shrugs, because it’s true. He’s never been an especially neat person, and he’s really good at losing smaller things. Back when he and Antoine were on the same team, Antoine would solve the problem by keeping Max’s ties with his own, and delivering them pre-tied when Max needed them. It was one of those things they had to adjust to when they entered the Q, but Antoine still knows how to find the things Max inevitably loses, and they still know how to talk each other down from the pressure and anxiety of it all. That first year was good for something, but this could be the beginning of a whole other first year, and Max isn’t sure how to feel about it. They’ve never done this before.

* * *

Max focuses because he can feel Antoine reaching for him, and he's on the plane. He doesn’t have anything better to do; he thinks some of the guys are playing cards, but most of them are wiped enough that they’re napping or doing something low-key. So he can focus, and he focuses, walking the wire till he ends up somewhere that looks familiar, Antoine at the end of it, like always.

“Where are we?” Max asks, even though he already knows the answer. 

“An empty Montreal metro,” Antoine says, eyes fixed on the art installation in front of them. “Place-des-Arts, I think.”

Max knows that all the artwork in the metros is different. He just isn’t able to tell them apart, but then, he’s not good at those kinds of details. That’s what he has Antoine for. 

“Why are we here?” Max asks. 

Antoine shrugs. “I was remembering it.”

They’re standing in front of an art installation that reminds Max of stained glass, the colours playing over Antoine’s face, reds and blues and yellow mostly. It’s beautiful, but it feels commonplace, the kind of thing you’re so used to looking at that it looks ordinary until you catch it again from a new angle and lose your breath looking at it like a sucker punch to the gut, and Max loses the thread, isn’t sure what he’s talking about anymore. 

“It’s nice,” Max says, because it’s too quiet. The metro is never actually this quiet, not even close to closing time, when only the panhandlers and the drunks are on it. 

“It was the first piece of art ever commissioned for the metro,” Antoine says, eyes skimming over it like there’s some hidden message waiting for him. “It’s over fifty years old.”

“What’s it called?” Max asks. 

“Something about music,” Antoine says, and he finally turns to look at Max. His profile under the coloured light was already a lot, but now it’s even worse, the light catching more against the left side of his face and hair. “I’m not remembering it right, but we can go see it if you really want to.”

“I do,” Max says automatically. “I really do.”

Antoine smiles. “How’d you manage to get away?”

“We’re on the plane. Did you call me for something?”

“I just wanted to see you. They’re keeping you up, aren’t they?”

Max would be lying if he said he hadn’t realised. “I think so.”

For one moment Antoine’s face flickers into something that looks close to resignation, but then he’s all warm smiles and reaching for Max. “I’m proud of you.”

Max wraps his arms around Antoine immediately. The thought crosses his mind, for one instant, that perhaps Antoine did this intentionally, so Max couldn’t see his face. He says it anyway, because he’s never been afraid to have Antoine telling him to fuck off. “We’re going to be farther away. I mean, we’re going to Chicago, so it’s a closer timezone, but--”

“I know,” Antoine says, muffled into Max’s shoulder. “I know.”

When he steps away, there’s a blue spot right over his eye, red over his mouth. Max’s happiness is tainted by the knowledge that this is it; this is the only way they’re going to see each other for the rest of this year. “What happens if we leave the metro?”

“There’s a mall. And museums. And street art and graffiti, but it wouldn’t be Montreal without it,” Antoine says, brows furrowed. “Max--”

“Let’s go,” Max says. If they talk about it, he won’t be able to stay happy about staying up, tainted by the knowledge that Antoine will be away from him. 

Antoine’s mouth quirks. “I won’t be able to recreate it, you know.”

“Then let me,” Max says, reaching out for Antoine’s hand. 

Antoine’s laughing at him, managing to convey the sentiment with just his eyes. “You don’t even come here that often.”

“Then I’ll take us out,” Max says, and Antoine laughs out loud, echoing around the empty metro. He lets Max lead him up the stairs, and out straight into a wilderness, a hiking trail with lamp posts interspersed with trees, and Antoine laughs so hard he’s almost crying. This is good. They’re good. Max puts in deer next to a fire hydrant and Antoine makes a strangled sound that Max knows is him trying to bite down on more laughter. It’s good. They're good. This isn't going to break them.

Henrique is eyeing Max oddly when he comes out of it, still somewhat stuck in the forest he’d made for them, and Max flushes. "You have a bond already?" Henrique asks. 

"I've been bonded for a few years now," Max admits. Few years sounds more innocuous than the specifics, sounds so much better than ‘I knew him before I even met him’ and 'I know him like I know myself.' They don’t tell the truth now, but they never really did before. They had some instinct of self-preservation.

"And you're still so--" Henrique makes a gesture that Max can't even hope to guess at. 

His shoulders are up around his ears, defensive. Antoine is everything. Almost no one knows here, hasn't learned to read between the lines, but they're common knowledge in the Q. It's only a matter of time before someone else who came up in the Q around them tells the team. 

"It's important," Max hisses. He probably shouldn't be trying to get into a fight with his new teammates, but Antoine isn’t here to reel him back, dealing with whatever crisis of the day Sam has concocted that forced him out of their heads. 

"It's sweet," Henrique says, smiling like nothing bothers him. "That you care so much." 

Oh, well, that's okay then. Like he knows what Max is thinking, Henrique laughs. "You're very touchy about it." 

"Back home everyone knows," Max says. "And here I don't want anyone to know yet. I don't even know how you know." 

"I'm good at telling," Henrique says, in an attempt at comfort that still falls flat. “Jersey had guys like that, and it’s easiest to tell with the guys like you, who don’t need to fall asleep to reach out.”

“So you don’t?” Max asks, because if Henrique didn’t mind invading his privacy, he can’t mind Max invading his.

Henrique manages something that still feels like a smile on his face. “It’s complicated. Not anymore.”

Max winces a little, but doesn’t apologize. Bonds are sacred; Henrique knew that when he asked about it.

* * *

“I think people are going to know, soon,” Max says, and he means it as an observation, but it sounds more like a death sentence to him. He couldn’t hold it together in the face of one conversation; there’s definitely more headed his way if he's that obvious.

Antoine raises an eyebrow, crystal clear on Max’s screen. 

“One of my teammates knew when I came out of it on the plane.”

“They don’t have to know it’s me,” Antoine says placidly, as serene as a lake that has just iced over, right before anyone skates on it. 

“But they might. No one we know will be quiet about it,” Max says, and doesn’t know if that thought fills him with joy or fear.

“I’ll make them if I have to,” Antoine says, and he still sounds calm, but so, so confident. “Our terms or not at all, Max, it’ll be fine.”

Max has to believe him, when he sounds that sure. He has to. Antoine hasn't steered him wrong yet. He nods, a little inanely and more than a little out of step. 

Antoine softens a little bit. "You know me. I won't do anything if it means people will get in between us. I don't want anyone prying any more than you do." 

"I do know," Max says, a bolt of fondness lancing through him, as quick as lightning and nearly as painful. The two of them are not supposed to be like this, but they are. The two of them have flouted all of convention and most of unconvention, and not a day goes by that Max forgets it. And it’s still not enough for him, some days, and that thought sinks him, a little, the melancholy of having more than he ever should have and still wanting more. 

“Are you okay?” Antoine asks, head cocked to the side, eyes fixed on Max’s face. 

Sometimes, video calls are a pain in the ass, but seeing Antoine’s face is everything, even if Max is telegraphing his every emotion. “I just miss you,” Max says plaintively.

The open longing on Antoine’s face is almost too much to bear, even though it’s for Max. “I know.”

Their combined longing feels like a heartbeat, throbbing with emotion. Something that feels like tears is building up in Max’s throat.

* * *

“How bad is it?” Antoine demands, first thing, closing the distance between them quickly, hands grabbing at Max’s own. 

“Not that bad, I swear,” Max promises. “Mostly just annoying.”

Antoine is swinging their hands together in the space between them, fingers tangled with Max’s, and he’s glaring down at Max’s legs like he can see the problem, which he can’t, because they’re in their dreams. “I can’t believe you got hurt.”

“It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t mean to.”

“You never mean to,” Antoine huffs. “And then trying to play through it, too.”

“They’re going to send me down because of it,” Max says. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be closer to Antoine, but being sent down sucks, especially when he’s already burned a year of his ELC. 

“They can’t send you down till you’re better, I think,” Antoine says, head tilted to the side. “Maybe they’ll end up keeping you anyway, since they’ve already burned a year of your contract. It would be a bit of a waste for them, right?”

“Maybe isn’t good enough,” Max says, and he hates how he sounds fairly pathetic about it.

“I know you don’t want to be sent down, but you’ll have World Juniors,” Antoine says. 

As if Max cares that much about World Juniors. It feels blasphemous to say, but in the grand scheme of things, Max is a people-person and Antoine’s person first and World Juniors is just a game. A high-stakes game, maybe, but just a game. And it’s a game where he already has a gold medal. He gives Antoine a look, trying to express all of that but probably just looking irritated. 

Antoine’s fingers squeeze his own. “You never know what could happen. Maybe they’ll keep you up, anyway.”

Max thinks he might hate the word maybe. 

“You’re really okay, though?” Antoine asks, using their joined hands to vaguely gesture at Max’s feet. 

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not a real answer.” 

Antoine’s face is stuck somewhere between concern and irritation and Max bites down on his lip so he doesn’t laugh. “Really, it’s minor. I probably won’t be out for more than two weeks.”

“I’m going to set a calendar countdown,” Antoine says, serenely. 

It’s a miracle no one has realised how much of a shithead Antoine really is. 

“Where did you even bring us?” Max asks, because he doesn’t recognise this. It looks like the edge of some random woods.

“That wasn’t even a subtle subject change,” Antoine says, half-laughing. “But I’ll let you have it this time. We do bonfires near here, sometimes. Get the sticks from around here, and there’s a place with a setup for a fire pit.”

“And someone brings their guitar?”

“Of course someone brings their guitar,” Antoine says, rolling his eyes and stepping away from Max, finally letting go of his hands. 

“And who is that someone?” Max asks, slyly. 

Antoine turns pink and looks adorable doing it, not quite meeting Max’s eyes. “C’mon, I’ll show you where the bonfires are set up.”

Max follows him, of course, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t file this away as something to question Antoine about later.

* * *

_go get an ice pack or whatever_

_ ????? _

_ you keep thinking about the pain and then not getting anything for it _

_ it’s bothering me _

_ so it’s definitely bothering you more _

_ sorry _

_ don’t fucking apologise _

_ it’s not your fault _

_ just go get an ice pack _

_ stop trying to tough it out _

_ k mom _

_ that was weak even for you _

_ <3 _

_ stop using heart emojis to get out of everything _

_ <3 <3 <3 _

_ is it working _

_ now that you’ve admitted it _

_ definitely not _

_ :( _

_ stop that _

_ send me hearts antoine _

_ no _

_ antoiiiiiiiiiiiiine _

_ what _

_ heartssssssssssssssssssssssss _

_ no _

_ heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttttsssssssss _

_ are you just going to keep doing this? _

_ i want hearts :( _

_ no _

_ consider _

_ for 1 heart emoji i will stop _

_ ...you’re being ridiculous _

_ if u loved me u would _

_ are you actually 12 _

_ yes _

_ fine _

_ <3 _

_ <3 <3 <3 _

_ <3 <3 <3 _

_ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 _

_ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 _

_ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 _

_ sam literally just looked over my shoulder and called us disgusting _

_ this is your fault _

_ how did he even kno u were txting me _

_ he said it was my face _

_ ‘how else?’ _

_ he probably snapped you _

_ he did lmao _

_ u look dumb _

_ literally ur so full of shit _

_ u were being difficult just for shits n giggles _

_ it’s not like anyone else is going to call me out on it _

_ k bro _

_ glad ur on my side tho _

_ <3 _

_ <3 _

_ feeling better now? _

_ y _

_ dont be smug abt it _

_ too late _

_ gonna be smug forever _

_ ur the fucking worst _

_ liar <3 _

_ yeah yeah _

_ <3 _

* * *

“Not tired yet?” Antoine asks, grinning when he realises what Max wants. He always shows up knowing, and that’s its own kind of magic. 

“Never tired,” Max says, fiercely. “Besides, you’re one to talk.”

Antoine is already reaching out for the sticks leaning against the garage door. "This isn't your house," he observes coolly. 

"My billet's," Max tells him. "I can make it my house." 

"You almost never bring me here."

“Because I’ll miss you more, if I know what it’s like to have you here,” Max says, even though it makes him blush. Antoine looks so stupidly pleased that he can’t bring himself to mind.

Antoine’s smile turns into the barest hint of a smirk. “Being nice to me isn’t going to stop me from beating you.”

Max splutters. “I can’t play right now, not actually, so at least let me have this.”

Antoine’s already got a tennis ball on the stick he’s chosen, playing keep-up. He catches the ball again and he smirks. “Good, you have more incentive to actually try to win.”

“I’m going to.”

“No, you won’t,” Antoine says, and hits Max in the shin with the tennis ball. Not hard enough to hurt, but still. He plays dirty; Max forgot that. “Don’t get hurt, obviously.”

“You’re the worst,” Max says, laughing in disbelief, but he’s still quick to follow on Antoine’s heels when Antoine picks up the rebounding tennis ball and heads towards the goal net, automatically set up for the two of them like it usually is. 

* * *

“Hey,” Antoine says, completely neutrally when Max calls. He definitely knows already, or at least suspects. Max has the feeling that his head hasn’t been all that quiet, the last couple of hours, bleeding through to Antoine despite the distance. 

“I’m coming back to the Q,” Max says, and Antoine is so quiet, no intake of breath, no anything. 

“Sorry,” Antoine says finally, and it’s like Max is touching ice. There’s nothing there; Antoine is bottling everything up.

“Wh--no, don’t apologise,” Max scowls, even though Antoine cannot see him. “We both knew it was coming.”

Antoine makes a vague humming noise, like he’s not 100% paying attention to Max’s words. “You’re allowed to be sad about it. Also stop frowning at me, I know you wanted to stay up.”

“How can you tell I’m frowning at you?” Max asks, ignoring the rest of what Antoine’s saying. 

“Oh, I don’t know, how do you always know when it’s time to yell at me for trying to play through an injury?” Antoine is poking at him so that Max can feel it, laced with potent amounts of ‘isn’t it obvious?’ 

Max is being crushed by ten tons of fondness that he’s pretty sure Antoine can also feel, because he has had exactly no self-restraint today. “You shut your mouth.”

“You know I’ll just bug you here,” Antoine says over the phone while tugging at Max in his head. 

Max can feel the imprint of Antoine’s fingers laced with his, because the two of them are too good at this, better than they let anyone know. Better than anyone they know, for sure. He squeezes three times, a secret that only the two of them know, and feels Antoine’s smile like it’s his own, quicker than a flash of lightning. 

“You’re really okay?” Antoine asks. 

Max closes his eyes and can almost see Antoine, sitting at a desk, head cocked slightly to the side. He thinks something might be playing, softer than a locker room tune, can almost imagine up piano and a woman crooning if he strains. Too quiet to hear over the phone, but something Antoine can hear during the silences on their call.

“It’s not so bad,” Max says, not sure where the lump in his throat is coming from. “Just gotta work harder, right?”

“You’re going to be fine,” Antoine says quietly, something that tastes like pride in his voice, sweet and rich, dripping like honey. “I’ll meet you when you touch down, okay? I have to go soon; I said I’d help with dinner.”

“Domestic,” Max chirps. 

“Fuck you, I’m going to be a great house husband,” Antoine says, which doesn’t even make sense. 

“You’re not going to be a house husband.”

“You don’t know what my aspirations are. Maybe all I wanted in life was to be a house husband but this tragic thing called hockey happened and tore my dreams apart.” The Antoine that he both is and isn’t imagining up is leaning back in his chair and smiling up at the ceiling.

“Aspirations? What, are you making plans to go be a college kid now?”

“Of course not, I still want to play with you,” Antoine says, sounding vaguely offended. “I was kidding, Max.”

“You kid very seriously,” Max says, hopes desperately that Antoine can’t tell how close he is to laughing at the ridiculous turn this conversation has taken. He was just trying to tell Antoine he was coming back.

“I know you’re onto me,” Antoine snickers, but not meanly. “I gotta go, but I’ll be there when you’re back, okay?”

“Okay,” Max says, and feels like he can finally breathe. “Okay. Go be domestic and charming, or whatever it is that you do out in Nova Scotia.”

“I will, thanks,” Antoine says, huffing out a quiet laugh. “Go pack. Text me your flight details.”

“Will do. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The line goes dead, but his awareness doesn’t. Phantom fingers squeeze his three times, and Max bites down his smile as he squeezes back.

* * *

Antoine looks so sharp and clear when he shows up that Max wants to cry a little. As it is, Max knows he sounds entirely too choked up. “Hi, Antoine.”

“Hi Max,” Antoine says, breathlessly, before flinging himself into Max’s arms. Max literally staggers back two steps, but his arms are already around Antoine, so it doesn’t even matter. 

“I didn’t even realise how bad it was,” Max breathes, mostly into Antoine’s hair. 

He can feel Antoine’s lashes ghosting against his neck. They’re a little damp, but Max isn’t going to say anything about it, not when he’s literally one word away from bursting into tears himself.

“It would’ve been so much worse if you had,” Antoine mumbles, mostly into Max’s shoulder. “It’s so fucking good to see you, you don’t even know.”

Max can’t argue with him on that. Not that he’s doing a lot of seeing right now, mostly catching Antoine’s hair and nothing else, but Antoine doesn’t seem like he’s going to let go any time soon, and Max doesn’t actually have any problems with that. Maybe he should, but he doesn’t. 

Antoine’s arms tighten around him like he's heard the last few seconds of Max's thoughts. "I missed dreaming with you.”

“Antoine,” Max says, because that’s it, that’s the thing that breaks the dam. He manages to blink through most of it, only a couple of tears actually making it down his face.

Antoine lets go after another quiet eternity passes, but stays in Max’s orbit. His face is pink but his eyes are not so wet anymore. It’s meaningless; Max knows he can cry again if he wants to. There are still tear tracks shining slightly silver on Antoine’s face, but he’s looking at Max like he’s trying to drink him in, like Max is a bottomless well he wants to empty. 

“You look so tired,” Antoine says, finally, fingers skimming across Max’s cheekbone.

Max feels better than he has in weeks, actually. “I’m going to sleep once I get to my billet’s.”

“You fucking better,” Antoine says, without heat. “You look half-dead.” 

“Ouch. That hurts.”

“Then look less fucking dead,” Antoine says, and he tries to sound fierce but mostly just sounds worried, looking up at Max with dark, shiny eyes and a furrowed brow. Max thinks it’s very cute, like, in a small woodland animal way. He doesn’t think he’s even making sense, all of his thoughts slightly disconnected, distracted by having Antoine right there. 

“Sorry,” Max says, and chokes down the endearment that wants to escape his throat. “Sorry.”

Antoine just looks at him for a long moment. “I have to go soon; I just really wanted to see you.”

“I’m all yours,” Max says, spreads his arms wide, tries not to think about why saying that could be terrible. 

Antoine’s eyes crinkle, and he laughs a little bit at Max as he steps into the hug Max is offering. “You need to sleep. I’m going now.”

He still stays in that hug for a miniature forever before he leaves.

* * *

_ thanks max <3 _

_ pls _

_ as if it was a big deal. it feels like i was dying without noticing until i saw you _

_ poetic _

_ look other ppl dont have bond separation but i think we rly might _

_ i'm not arguing with you _

_ i swear i'm not _

_ but don't you think we'd have noticed? _

_ it wouldnt be in all those tragedies if it didnt happen _

_ and we dont normally spend so long apart _

_ maybe we just found the limit _

_ i'm going to hope you're wrong _

_ i don't think you are _

_ but i'll hope you are _

_ hockey isn't a good sport to be in if you're right _

_ but we have to kno that its happening couldnt u feel it _

_ i could. but we're fucked if anyone even starts to guess _

_ delete these texts _

_ i will too _

_ it was good to see you again _

_ really see you, i mean _

_ same _

_ <3 _

_ <3 _

* * *

It still catches Max by surprise, how real Antoine is. The two of them are lying in a field, somewhere, covered in dandelions that are still yellow, far too much late spring when they’re this close to winter, and he can feel the heat of Antoine against his side. Antoine has one of his hands, is sort of idly mapping it with his fingers, tracing lifelines and whatever else and Max can feel his callouses. It’s a weird thing to have missed, but it’s the principle of it. 

"Bond separation?" Antoine asks, finally, a thumb rubbing over Max's knuckles. 

"I don't think it's that strong," Max says, but remembers how that reunion felt like popping a dislocated shoulder back into place and knows he's right. "But I'm sure, Antoine."

Antoine turns on his side to face Max, his hair falling into his eyes as he does. He’s sort of clutching Max’s hand to his chest like he’s forgotten he’s holding it. “Even more than anything else, that’ll be the thing that fucks us.”

Max catches a thread of Antoine’s thoughts, about being hunted, about people in white coats and the smell of antiseptic and talking about it. They stopped seeing Dr. Benoit because she was going to get too close to the truth and let her think it was because they’d managed to put up effective barriers. They let people know about them early on so no one looks twice. Even their families don’t know the whole of it.

Max bites his lip. “We managed months on almost three thousand miles.”

Antoine’s thoughts haven’t calmed at all. Max always thought he was the one more affected by their bond specialist, but he’s starting to think that that’s not even remotely the case. 

“Antoine, no one will find out,” Max promises. “I swear.”

Max can feel it when Antoine bites down on the inside of his mouth and tells himself to get a fucking grip. Antoine still looks a little out of it, a little like he’s still stuck in that lab he conjured, a spiral of almost improbable worst-case scenarios. Against Max’s hand, which Antoine has almost definitely forgotten he’s holding, his heart is racing. Max tastes blood in his mouth that isn’t his, and Antoine’s eyes are focused on him again, intent like a laser. 

“We’re going to be fine,” he says, but there isn’t enough strength of conviction in his voice to settle Max. 

“No one knows about this part,” Max reminds him, gently, using their joined hands to gesture between the two of them, while also pushing a bundle of reassurances at Antoine. 

Antoine manages a very shaky smile. “You’re right, I know.”

Max thinks he might know it without actually knowing it, but there’s nothing he can do about it. “We’ve ended up bad literature.”

“It’s good literature,” Antoine counters. “It’s just not how they want you to think, so it’s bad literature.”

That’s fair, although depressing, and Max tells Antoine that. 

Antoine rolls his eyes, and it’s familiar enough that Max can almost ignore that his mouth tastes like secondhand blood. “That’s the whole fucking point of never saying anything.”

“Even if I could tell the whole world, I wouldn’t,” Max admits, pushing down the guilt. He knows he’s selfish, but having to say it out loud isn’t helping matters. 

Antoine offers up a quick smile and squeezes Max’s hand, so whatever, Max can have this.

* * *

“Fucking bullshit you’re not invited,” Max hisses into the phone that he really isn’t supposed to be using right this moment. He only has a few moments to make this count. “You didn’t even give me a heads up, what the fuck? I was expecting to see you here but instead I have two of your current teammates and one of your former teammates.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your moment,” Antoine says, way too evenly. 

“I don’t give a fuck about my fucking moment,” Max practically screeches into the phone, too loudly, because every single one of Antoine’s teammates, current and former, are looking at him too knowingly. Even his own teammates are giving him that look. Antoine’s current teammates, however, look distinctly guilty, giving each other looks because they think Max isn’t paying attention to them. They knew, then. He can’t even fault them for it, because this has Antoine written all over it.

Antoine sighs. “There will be other games.”

“Not other World Juniors,” Max says, consciously lowering his voice so none of the Q guys watching him like a hawk eavesdrop.

There’s a throb of sorrow in his head, and Max deflates. He’s not actually mad at Antoine, just pissed off at the situation. Antoine is so good at pushing down his emotions and letting Max spill over everywhere, making sure Max doesn’t realise how he’s feeling until he’s pushed over a threshold. And it’s not like Max doesn’t know how this works; there’s only a certain number of spots they can fill, but Antoine has been so good this season. As uncharitable as it is, he’d trade in any of these guys in a heartbeat to get Antoine next to him.

Max sighs. “Okay, one, stop not being sad. You can be sad.”

Antoine laughs a little hollowly, but it’s a laugh. “Max…”

“You should’ve been picked,” Max whispers, because he can feel multiple sets of eyes on him. The disadvantages of a good number of his potential teammates being people who are, in the loosest sense, in the know. “You were in the summer; it’s bullshit that you weren’t now. You’re playing so well. But you weren’t, and I can’t do anything about that, but at least you can be sad.”

“But I’m happy for _ you _,” Antoine says, and sunshine bursts into Max’s mouth, because Antoine is fiercely ecstatic and proud, and he can feel the slightly dizzying effect of Antoine shaking him in excitement, one hand slipping down his arm to squeeze his hand. 

He’s biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t smile, squeezing back like always. “Fuck, fine, I’ll win it all for you.”

“Give them all a good fucking show,” Antoine says, voice warm, and Max is so lucky. He’s so fucking lucky, that Antoine doesn’t resent him, that Antoine loves him enough to be happy for him even though he is upset. 

“I will,” Max promises. “I have to go; the coaches are going to talk to us.”

“And you called me?” Antoine asks, now sounding as pissed off as Max had earlier. 

“You weren’t here!” Max protests, hanging up on Antoine, and not a moment too soon, because the room is quieting now and he really, really, cannot get caught. 

* * *

“What’s all this?” Antoine asks when he shows up. 

Max is so glad that despite the time difference, they did manage this, because ending that phone call on the note that they did left a sour taste in his mouth. 

It’s somewhere or some daydream pulled from Antoine’s head, stars up above them and a body of water in front of them, no moon, just starlight. 

“You get to be sad,” Max says, softly. “You can be happy for me and still sad for yourself. Part of you is still you and not me.”

They don’t really subscribe to separation of consciousness, but that’s because they have such a strong bond. Antoine could be on the moon, thousands of miles away, and Max would still be able to feel him, he thinks. But just because they are that close doesn’t mean they don’t subscribe to autonomy, even if it’s not autonomy in the traditional sense. They have their private spots, islands staked out in the seas of Max-and-Antoine that are just Max or just Antoine. They used to be worse at it, but they’d have gone insane otherwise. 

Even in the dark, Max can tell Antoine’s shaking a little, but he keeps talking anyway; he has to get it all out. “You let me keep saying ‘we’ the entire time. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I like making you happy,” Antoine says, and Max’s heart clenches. He has Antoine because Antoine is what he deserves, but he doesn’t deserve him like this, being too unfairly selfless. “I knew you weren’t going to be back long enough to find out before you got there, and it was so easy.”

“Okay, but now I want you to get to be sad.”

Antoine shrugs, hands tucked in his hoodie pocket. “Could be worse. I wanted to see you.”

Antoine is looking back at Max levelly, like he’s daring Max to protest, so apparently this is one of those things Antoine is going to go sulk about on his own, maybe skipping rocks in Beauharnois or whatever.

Max shrugs back at him. “You’re never the selfish one.”

Antoine rolls his eyes. “It’s not a competition.”

“How dare you be reasonable?” Max jokes, knocking his shoulder into Antoine’s.

Antoine reaches out for his hand, and doesn’t say anything, looking out at the water. A light breeze is ruffling his hair, but overall, it’s quiet and peaceful and Max can’t bring himself to break the silence.

* * *

Max's shoulder doesn't hurt in their dreams, so he takes the opportunity to stretch it out. It’ll still be a pain to deal with when he’s awake, but the momentary relief now is worth it.

Antoine's face is a thundercloud. "Playing injured?" 

"It's just me," Max sighs. He loves it, but the pressure is on him, the only returning player, the captain, trying for the back-to-back gold medals. The C makes it hard to breathe sometimes, heavy in a bad way. No one ever tells them, just tells them it’s a fucking honour. It can be both. 

Antoine is biting his lower lip hard enough that Max is expecting him to bite through it. "I know. I hate it." 

“What, no yelling?” Max asks, head tilted. 

Antoine’s smile has a tinge of shit-eating to it. “No, that’s your job. My job is to tell you to do what you have to, but don’t be fucking stupid about it.”

That’s actually pretty accurate. “And this isn’t stupid?”

Antoine makes a so-so gesture. “I can tell you’re hurt, but it’s not so bad that you shouldn’t be playing. It’s forgivable given the circumstances, even if I’d rather you sit it out.”

“How are things in Halifax?” Max asks, in a blatant subject change that Antoine takes without questioning. 

“Not bad,” Antoine says thoughtfully. “I think Sam might be on a quest to kiss every single member of this team at midnight, but I get counted out for captain’s privileges and because I told him I had a soulmate. He hasn’t put it together yet, you know.”

“So you’re just going to let him struggle?” Max asks, pushing down the thread of misplaced jealousy. He doesn’t get to be jealous about this; it’s not like he’s even managed to declare intent, too chickenshit to do anything right. 

Antoine snickers. “Of course I’m just going to let him struggle; it’s funny.”

“You’re so mean,” Max says, admiringly. “I’m so glad you’re on my side.”

Antoine looks so pleased with himself.

* * *

“I’ll fight the whole world for you,” Antoine says, matter-of-fact, the second Max picks up his video call. 

It shouldn’t make Max’s heart skip several beats, shouldn’t make him feel like he’s floating, but it does. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Antoine protests, looking entirely too stubborn. “You’re Captain Canada; it’s not fair to you.”

“But if I take it on, it won’t come to anyone else as badly.”

“No,” Antoine says, scowling. “No, Max. I don’t care if you’ve already won gold, you can’t take on the whole world.”

“You literally opened this call threatening to fight the whole world, Antoine,” Max says, just a little bit amused by his soulmate’s contrariness. 

“You’re lying about the pressure,” Antoine frets, rather than responding to Max. He’s worrying worse than Max’s own mother, and Max is so hopelessly charmed, like he always is.

“Anyway, you’re not even supposed to be reading that stuff.”

“I don’t need to; it’s all over your head, and I hate it. You’re so much better than this,” Antoine’s frown has become a little bit sulky, a little closer to a pout, and the way Max's heart clenches cannot possibly be good for him.

Max shrugs. “It’s whatever. Did you literally call me just to make open-ended threats?”

“Is it still a threat if I’m planning to follow through on it?” Antoine asks, like that’s not a terrifying thought at all.

“No. Just this once, no follow-through,” Max says, because any possible idea Antoine has is a bad one, he knows this without seeing it.

Antoine is trying to both glare at him and pout at the same time and failing to do both. “Max,” Antoine whines, drawing it out.

“You can’t fight everyone for being mean,” Max says, but the spark in Antoine’s eyes just burns brighter. 

Antoine tilts his head and smiles charmingly. “But Max, consider--”

“No,” Max shuts it down immediately. 

Antoine can be dangerous when he has a mind to be. Letting him say what he wants to assholes on the internet has the potential of being explosive. Max doesn’t think Antoine’s going to say anything about the bond, but he knows that Antoine will sit in a personal hurricane of media backlash and grin his way through it, and that’s not the kind of risk-taking he wants to encourage in his soulmate.

Antoine just full on pouts, but Max isn’t swayed, and doing this through a call is at least half the reason why. “Max,” he says, sadly, but Max isn’t letting him do whatever he’s planning. 

“I’m going to be cutting my socials anyway,” he says, because at least one of them has to be rational. 

Antoine continues to pout. “That’s still garbage.”

Max tries not to look too obviously endeared. “I’m going to hang up on you if you say anything else about it.”

“Funkiller,” Antoine mutters, before managing a rictus of a smile. “How are things, if we’re not talking about the large, terrible elephant in the room that you refuse to let me do anything about even though I’m more than capable of it?”

Max drags his free hand down his face. Seriously, how do people think Antoine is an angel all the time?

* * *

Antoine’s knocking in Max's head, timidly, but Max can’t open the floodgates enough to respond to him without drowning Antoine in secondhand misery he doesn’t deserve. This isn’t his loss, and Max didn’t think he’d end up glad that Antoine wasn’t tapped for the tournament, but then again, Max didn’t think they would lose. 

_ cant rite now _

_ sry _

_ it’s fine _

_ just wanted to check on you _

_ call me tmr? _

_ i can do that _

_ love u <3 _

_ <3 _

Joe’s watching him. “Was that--” He cuts himself off. He knows better than to say it here.

Max presses his lips together, debating telling the truth, and nods. 

Joe’s face flashes through emotions quickly, but Max still catches the pity, loud and clear. He doesn’t think Joe’s like, a bad guy, but it sits badly in his stomach. “Was he like, mad at you?”

What the fuck.

Max shakes his head, quickly, and Joe looks a little relieved. “Like, there was no gloating or anything?”

That sounds too specific to be an idle question, but Max decides he emphatically doesn’t want to know what’s going on with Joe’s soulmate. He just wants to get nice and drunk, and then let Antoine comfort him, and spend a lot of time being grateful that his soulmate is the bigger person. Metaphorically only, because Antoine is like, not the tallest person out there. 

“No,” Max hisses, because he realises that he hasn’t answered Joe. “He’s worried. I want shots.”

Joe looks like he has more questions to ask, but Max would rather shoot himself at this point, so he stumbles away to go find the hard liquor.

_ glad ur not a weird duck _

_ dick _

_ watever _

_ ??????? _

_ other pppls soulmates _

_ weird as fuck _

_ drink water _

_ and go to sleep soon _

_ aye aye cap _

* * *

Max hopes that their channels are closed enough that Antoine isn’t getting any of his head's pounding secondhand. Antoine cannot actually do anything for the headache that Max enters their dreams with, but just the sight of him makes Max feel a little better. Antoine is leaning on a bridge overlooking a frozen river, wrapped up snugly in a coat and beanie and scarf. The sun is out, but it’s still pretty cold.

“Hi Max,” he says, but doesn’t look away from watching a couple of crows playing in the snow by the riverbank.

“Hi,” Max croaks. “Sorry for locking you out. Didn’t want you to be sad.”

Antoine’s gloved hand reaches for Max’s, and he tucks their intertwined fingers into his coat pocket. “No, that’s fine. You actually have readable drunk texts, it’s a little funny.”

“Why are we here?” Max asks, and lets himself rest his head against Antoine, even though he has to slouch a little to do it. 

Antoine huffs out a breath, a cloud of mist hanging in front of his face for a quick second. “I just wanted something restful for you. This was it, apparently.”

It is nice, and Max makes sure to tell Antoine that. The way Antoine smiles at him in return is deadly. Even with the stabbing headache he has, Max can see the appeal of dating Antoine, unable to stop the thought in its tracks the way he usually does. He just--he’s so tired, and his head aches, and Antoine is right there, being sweet and looking attainable.

* * *

They’re in Max’s head this time, and Max’s head is all sunsets and light breezes and waterfront, the two of them on some kind of raised boardwalk. 

“Are you planning to romance someone?” Antoine asks, eyebrows raised, but he leans back against the railing, tips his head back, and basks in it anyway. 

Max’s face has never burned this bad in his life, not even on vacations to the Caribbean. “I don’t know how this is happening,” he says, despairingly. 

He hasn’t lost control over his own head in a while. The whole ignoring-his-problem thing had been working out so well, but his problem is currently looking entirely too relaxed and bathed in warm colours, and Max remembers the Place-des-Arts metro, the red and blue over Antoine’s face. Maybe he does know how this is happening. 

“You could tell me,” Antoine says. His eyes are still closed, and the breeze is ruffling his hair just so. It’s going to be a tousled mess in a bit, the way it gets when Antoine wakes up and when he doesn’t style it down.

Max absolutely could not tell him; he’d pitch himself off the railing first. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“If you say so,” Antoine says, but he looks a little less at ease. 

Max sighs very quietly, but he thinks Antoine picks up on it anyway. “I don’t want it to be a thing.”

“But it is?”

“Only a little one,” Max admits guiltily, his eyes fixed on Antoine. 

Antoine opens his eyes and catches Max’s eyes. “If it were a thing, I don’t think you’d have a hard time with it. You care so much, Max. Look at all this.”

And Max looks at the sunset that’s been going on for far too long, burning oranges and vivid reds and vibrant pinks, and Antoine, silhouetted against it, and feels like the heroine in a romance novel. This is wish fulfillment at its finest. “You think so?”

“If they don’t appreciate you, then that’s on them. You're already going for perfect," Antoine says. "I feel vaguely romanced and I'm not even involved." 

But he is. He’s the whole reason this is happening in the first place, and Max almost says it, that all of this is for him, but it overflows his heart, that Antoine manages to feel romanced, so close and so far from what he wants. He wants Antoine romanced, and it’s the first time he’s really acknowledged it, the simmering want that’s a part of him, born out of years of this.

"Beauty treatment, obviously," Max croaks, through a bone dry throat. He has a flicker of a thought about romancing Antoine like this, but Antoine isn't stupid, if Max keeps slipping up, he'll know. This delusion will be over. 

"Not that I don't appreciate it, but save some for your girl," Antoine says, salt in the wound, stinging. 

Max just wants to pretend he can have this.

* * *

_ didn't think you were the pining type _

_ do we have to talk abt this _

_ not if you really don't want to _

_ i didnt kno until then _

_ it’ll be okay _

_ you’re good _

_ ur obligated to say that _

_ i’m really not _

_ i say these things because i love you _

_ which i was never obligated to do _

_ fuckface _

_ nice recovery throwing in that endearment _

_ doesnt take away from u saying nice shit _

_ no i also do that because i love you _

_ <3 _

_ can we not talk about this anymore? _

_ whatever you want. _

_ i still think you’ll be fine _

* * *

Max brings them to the beach again. He knows it’s him, and not Antoine, because they both like the beach but Max is the one who likes tropical beaches. Antoine likes rocky beaches, and going hiking, and running on the sand for “conditioning.” Max likes to go to beaches to let the sun melt into his bones and avoid sunburn, which Antoine still isn’t capable of, in real life. 

“We’re not running,” he says, preemptively, because Antoine is looking down the strip of beach thoughtfully. “Please, anything but that.”

“Anything?” Antoine asks, eyes glittering. 

The first response that comes to Max’s mind is too embarrassing to even think about saying out loud. The second and third responses are almost equally as bad, but he finally manages to figure out how to say something that isn’t going to make him want to disintegrate out of embarrassment. “Never mind, you’re not allowed to pick anything. We’re going to put chairs down here, and nap in the sun, and relax, and you are not going to get sunburned for once in your life.”

Antoine is laughing at him, which Max doesn’t think he quite deserves. Antoine gets sunburnt and toughs it out and then Max ends up shoving the aloe at him every time, sometimes helping him get it onto his back. “I don’t know why you’re laughing; I’m right.”

“Fine, you win. Maybe I’ll get sunburnt just to spite you.”

“Do not get sunburnt just to spite me; the point of dreaming together is so that nothing bad ever happens,” Max glares at Antoine. 

Something flashes across Antoine’s face too quick for Max to make it out. “So nothing bad ever happens?” Antoine asks, lightly, but Max doesn’t for a second believe it, not when his face had done that. 

“Yeah, Antoine,” Max says, rolling his eyes. “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to us in our dreams?”

Antoine looks away from him for a split second, and even when he responds, his eyes are skittering away from Max’s. “You’re right, of course.”

Max wants to ask if he’s been having nightmares on the nights they don’t meet, but Antoine hates being handled and Max has no subtlety.

* * *

They’re in Beauharnois again, the place Antoine goes to when he needs to think, and when Max walks up to him to sit beside him, and Antoine looks up at him, his eyes look too bright for a moment. It must have been the moonlight, reflecting off of the lake and Antoine’s eyes, because when Max looks again, there’s nothing glassy about them at all.

“What thoughts are going through your head, mon vieux?” Max asks, sitting cross-legged next to Antoine, his knee just brushing against Antoine’s foot. 

Antoine’s knees are drawn up to his chest again, but he mostly just seems tired. “Sometimes, I just want everything.”

“You’re going to the Memmer no matter what,” Max says, because it’s something that he’s jealous of, the double chances that the Mooseheads have because they’re hosting. They’re doing well this season, with Antoine as captain, and that’s one of those things he’s proud of, not jealous, because it doesn’t affect him. He wants to win, and so does Antoine. They stop talking during their own series, and have hugs in their handshake lines to console the loser, because otherwise they’d go insane. That’s still months off, though. 

“Everything is not just hockey, Max,” Antoine says, so softly that Max could almost miss it, and the moonlight, the water, the entire scene is filling Max with an ache that he knows no ice or heat pack will fix. There’s something so terribly empty about where they are despite all of its loveliness. 

“You can have everything,” Max manages to say, which is much better than saying that he’ll give Antoine everything.

Antoine shrugs, and the look he’s giving Max is heavy enough to pin him in place. “Some things are still things you can’t have. If you got everything you wanted, you wouldn’t be human anymore, Max.”

* * *

Max is trapped inside of a hedge maze with the moon shining above him, half full. Something about this entire setup feels wrong, his shoulders creeping up by his ears. He feels watched. “Antoine?” he calls, desperately hoping that this is a dream they share, and not his own head. 

He hears nothing, not even crickets. It’s dead silent, and that’s even more unsettling. “Antoine?” 

He hears something, faint, but he doesn’t think it’s Antoine. 

“Hello?” he calls, and starts walking, his hand on the hedge to his right. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he knows: if you keep your hand on the right side of the hedge, you eventually make your way out. He thinks it was Antoine, actually, Antoine who isn’t in this dream with him.

Max looks around him but all he has is the hedges and dim moonlight. "Hello?" he calls again, voice wavering despite his best efforts. 

There's a vise of dread clamped around his heart. Something about this entire scene is wrong, and he doesn't know if it's because Antoine isn't here, or something else. He keeps walking, though, because there’s nothing else for him to do, and that’s when he hears it, high-pitched and miserable. Someone or something is crying in this maze, crying like its heart is breaking. Max’s own heart is breaking just hearing it. 

“Hello?” he calls, and the crying stops.

He waits in place for a handful of heartbeats and it starts up again, somehow sounding more miserable than before. Max blinks rapidly before starting to walk in the direction that it’s coming from. It gets louder as he goes, but just as Max is sure he’s just around the corner from it, it goes silent again.

* * *

They’re back at Antoine’s thinking lake, but this time, Max can feel the bleakness from the beginning, and it makes him ache, that Antoine thinks he needs this, that Antoine sees it like this. Antoine is wrapped up in himself in exactly the same way as last time, arms tightly wrapped around the legs drawn up to his chest.

“What are you thinking about now, mon vieux?” Max asks, wrapping a loose arm around Antoine’s shoulders as he sits down. 

“Remember when I said I wanted everything?” Antoine asks, his voice too quiet. 

“And I told you you could have it?” Max says, because it doesn’t matter, he thinks Antoine could and should still have everything, remembers the glassy look to Antoine’s eyes and desperately wanting it to not be there. 

Antoine turns to look at Max, his eyes brimming with tears, and Max’s heart drops in his chest so quickly that he can almost hear it. 

“I don’t--” his voice cracks, and Max thinks something inside him is breaking with it. He’s literally never seen Antoine like this, and it hurts, that he didn’t see the signs to stop this, to make it better before it made Antoine break. 

Antoine swallows and keeps talking, words blurring into each other. “I don’t think I want everything. I don’t even think I want it in the way I should want anything.”

Max doesn’t know what this is about, but he doesn’t need to, not when Antoine is so obviously hurting. “Maybe it doesn’t need to be.”

“It might not be enough,” Antoine says, voice shaking. “I might not be--”

Max cuts him off, because no, because fuck that, because no one and nothing gets to make Antoine feel like that. “You’re going to be enough. You’ve always been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Antoine says, and the tears are slowly rolling down his face. 

“I’m yours,” Max says, tightening the arm he has around Antoine’s shoulders. “I’ve been yours for forever. And you’ve never been less than what I needed you to be, not even when we fought.”

“We never fought,” Antoine says, and he’s still crying, quiet and awful, but there’s almost a smile on his face. 

“We totally fought,” Max says, and leans his head on Antoine’s shoulder so he can wrap both arms around Antoine. The side-effect is not seeing Antoine crying, even though he can still feel Antoine trembling. 

“Nice to know you call a three hour attempt at the silent treatment fighting,” Antoine says, but the shaking still hasn’t stopped. 

This isn’t a thing Max can lighten the load of. Max squeezes just a little tighter, but he doesn’t want to squeeze too tight or impose anything on Antoine, just offer comfort. He knows Antoine, but that doesn’t mean he gets everything. Antoine can be and usually is sad on his own; he rarely asks for comfort. People don’t change overnight. Antoine is only here because he can’t be alone, because whatever is going on his head is too much for him to take. Max is perfectly helpless in this moment and he can’t fucking stand it.

* * *

They’re back in Antoine’s cloud world again, except this time they’re both taking a walk through it. Max thinks that this must be what it’s like to walk on the moon, feeling weightless, bouncing more than walking, and it’s just--fun and light, and easy, in a way that so many things haven’t been between the two of them recently. 

“How have things been?” Antoine asks. 

“Good,” Max says, because they have been. They’re going to make playoffs, and he’ll see Antoine again at the same time. 

“And your...situation?” Antoine asks, and right as Max opens his mouth to ask which situation, he gets hit by a flash of sunset.

Right. That situation, which Antoine is misinterpreting, which is both a potent relief and a tragedy. Max doesn’t know how to answer that question, so he just shrugs. “I don’t want to talk about it. How about you?”

“Everything’s fine,” Antoine says, deceptively lightly.

The scenery around them--twists, is the best way to put it. Max has a moment where it all dawns on him. He can tell what he couldn’t tell in the moment before, that Antoine is folding his thoughts to hide something, that it’s been happening for a while, and that Max can pull this loose thread and unravel the whole thing to follow it back to its start. He won’t do it like that, because he knows Antoine, and he’s not in the business of upsetting the person who is as much a part of him as Max is himself. 

“Did I do something?” 

Antoine blinks at him. “Do something?”

“Don’t play dumb, I can tell when you hide things,” Max says, and Antoine’s eyes flash for a moment, unnecessary confirmation. 

They’ve been together for so long. They’re so closely intertwined that there are entire parts of them that can’t be separated. They know each other inside and out, and Max isn’t sure how Antoine thought he could hide it. They’re too much each other to ever be anything else.

Antoine’s mouth turns down at the corners, and he shrugs. “It’s something you wouldn’t like to know, so I don’t want you to have to know it.”

That’s never happened before. Max can say it for fact, that Antoine has never previously felt the need to hide things from Max like this. Usually he just nudges Max away from those thoughts or has them flagged, and usually, they trust each other to respect boundaries, as much as they can. They may be more each other than anything else, but they both still carve out quiet oases for themselves, and mark them. It leaves a bad taste in Max’s mouth, that Antoine feels the need to hide something, that Antoine thinks Max would ever trespass on his privacy. “I wouldn’t like, or I wouldn’t want?”

Antoine freezes. “I don’t know. I think you wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what, Antoine?” Max asks, urgently.

Antoine shakes his head. “I have to go, Max. Later, please.”

The scene dissolves around them, Antoine gone before Max can even think about chasing after him.

* * *

Max sighs. He’s been miserable all day, enough that literally everyone on leadership has taken him aside to ask if he’s okay. Sure, he’s fine, except the part of him that’s Antoine is completely covered in icicles sharp enough to stab him and cold enough that he risks frostbite touching them. Of course he’s not fine, but admitting to it would be giving away too much information. He stares at his phone, which has remained stubbornly quiet all day. He’s not sure what’ll happen if he calls Antoine, doesn’t know if Antoine will pick up, but he thinks he has to be the one to do it. 

His fingers are two steps ahead, already dialing Antoine, who picks up almost immediately. 

“I’m sorry,” they both chorus together, before blinking at each other, confused. 

“Why are you sorry?” Antoine asks. 

“I shouldn’t have pushed,” Max says, frowning. “You’re allowed to hide things.”

“I shouldn’t have run away,” Antoine says, chewing on his lip. “I just--I can’t, yet. I don’t even know what’s going on, Max.”

He honestly looks kind of pitiful, and this entire moment feels like it’s going to shatter into glass if Max says the wrong thing. “You’ll let me know when you figure it out?”

Antoine’s expression turns even more tragic, somehow, and now all Max wants to do is hug him. “Depends on what’s going on, right?”

Max knows that he knows Antoine better than anyone else in the world. However, he also misses things about Antoine all the time, and this is just shaping up to be another one of them. “I just don’t want you to cry about it alone, if it’s that kind of thing,” Max says, helplessly, because that was one of the worst moments of his year, by far.

Antoine manages a melancholy smile. “If it’s something I can tell you about, I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you,” Max says, relieved.

* * *

"Are we in a tornado?" Max asks, incredulous. 

"Well, we sure as fuck aren't in Kansas anymore," Antoine mutters darkly. 

Despite himself, Max wants to laugh, even though the house they're in is definitely in a heavy windstorm, if not a tornado. "I'll take your driving over this; what the hell kind of thoughts have you been having?" 

"Emotional turmoil," Antoine grits out through clenched teeth as the house rocks violently. It's bizarrely empty, the two of them holding on to opposite sides of a bed that appears to be nailed to the floor. Practical, even if the house is wildly whipping. There’s things crashing in other rooms, and Max is afraid to look at the windows too closely, in case it leads to an invasion of privacy, or whatever. He still remembers the set of Antoine’s jaw, when he told Max he didn’t want Max to know. 

Max has no idea what's with Antoine's brain, honestly. "But you're good at this stuff. Every time we visited with Dr. Benoit she'd call you charming and self-possessed and give me twenty hours of mindfulness and meditation to have done for our next visit." 

Antoine snickers. "That's because I was quiet and you wouldn't stop moving and also kept ruining her tests. Or, she thought it was you, but it was both of us." 

Antoine's explained this to him before, too. Instead of just being interconnected, some parts of Max just are Antoine and vice versa. The two of them are more one whole than not, with shockingly little privacy barriers, according to Dr. Benoit, who had tried to show them how to form curtains. The two of them had spent afternoons shredding the gauze, using it to play in, fashioning it into hockey gear and playing shinny and Max is hit with nostalgia so strong his throat aches. 

"'Toine. You overthink." 

If Antoine has ever been good at anything, it's overthinking. Max used to try to draw him out of it, before he realised it wasn't a problem for Antoine. Sometimes on special days, like the night before the draft, maybe, but the overthinking means that Antoine thinks before he speaks while simultaneously being ridiculously in touch with his emotions, the brains and the heart of this operation. 

Not a problem; Max can body anyone if he needs to. He's just never needed to. It's an open secret among everyone, that the two of them peek in each other's minds. Antoine's good at shutting both their doors when he needs quiet; Max is good at breaking them down when Antoine’s needing quiet becomes hiding. Everyone else probably knows better than Antoine that Max has never had a bad thought about Antoine, has never landed in a place where Antoine would need to hide from him. But Antoine has been hiding, and so has Max, neither of them blameless.

Antoine glares at him, and then glares in the direction that is probably up. "Fine, I'll deal with it, can we stop now?" 

He cannot seriously think that’s going to work, but a few seconds after his yell into the void that is their heads, everything goes still, and quiet. Max releases his death grip on the bedpost and Antoine scowls. 

Everything around them abruptly disappears into white nothingness, and Max shuts his eyes against the blaze of light, which eventually dies down enough that he can open his eyes.

Max stares, blinking spots out of his eyes. They're in--honestly he's not even sure where they are. There's--

"Are we in a museum?" Max asks, incredulous.

Antoine's voice is soft, like Max’s voice when he ends up talking to babies or going to church. More like going to church; there’s reverence in it, like looking at something extraordinary. "Yeah. It's my memories." 

"All your memories?" Max asks, because it doesn’t seem like it could be enough. 

Antoine shakes his head. "Remember when Dr. Benoit had us organize our heads and separate them?" 

"She failed," Max says sourly. 

Antoine smiles, eyes sparkling, and it hits Max like a particularly hard check, the kind you see coming but can’t do anything to avoid. "Obviously she failed. But this is where I keep the important ones, like she showed us." 

Max’s container for his important memories is more like a photo album, but Antoine houses his in a museum, crafted with obvious, intense care. Max recognizes bits of parts of it, modeled after Antoine’s own house, but the rest of it seems to be Antoine’s taste. 

“So hockey and your family,” Max says, fascinated. 

“And you, obviously,” Antoine says, rolling his eyes. 

Max’s entire chest lurches. "And me?"

"You feature kind of a lot, of course you," Antoine says, aiming for nonchalant and missing by a mile, his voice cracking and entire face flushed.

Max can’t even make fun of him for it, so instead he just grabs Antoine in a headlock and makes sure to rake his fingers through his hair.

* * *

"How are you as shitty a driver in our dreams as you are when you're awake?" Max asks, thankful that he materialized with the seatbelt on. 

"I'm not that bad!" Antoine protests. The speedometer is tipping past 100, and the road they're on is a serpentine. 

Max has never wondered if he could die in his dreams, but he's starting to. "There is this thing called a brake."

Antoine gives Max the slyest smile, and winks. “That’s the fun part.”

Oh, good. He does it on purpose. It makes sense when Max really thinks about it, because Antoine is a technically perfect driver except for his inability to keep his foot off the accelerator. Max’s heart is racing, even though the speedometer has dipped a few kilometers. Antoine’s smiling, a little, in a way that’s always meant trouble.

“Don’t worry so much,” Antoine says, and the speedometer keeps dipping, but Max’s heart is still racing. 

He's always known where he's been, but it's never been as clear as it is now. "You're going to get us killed." 

"You said that nothing bad ever happens when we dream together," Antoine says. "We'll be fine, Max." 

He's actually dipped to driving at a far more reasonable type of speeding, and the road goes straight into the horizon. It has the potential to be nice, even, but Max’s heart hasn’t stopped racing this entire time.

* * *

They’re in Antoine’s head again, or the part where Antoine spills into both their heads. They’re in the middle of an ocean, waist-deep, and Antoine is standing there in his actual clothing, looking at the horizon, his face set and arms akimbo. 

“Is that a storm?” Max asks, looking at the horizon as well, and seeing a roiling black mass complete with dramatic lightning flashing red and white.

It looks fake, but he knows it isn’t. Antoine tends to express his mental moods as weather, but Max had forgotten, until the tornado. Antoine doesn’t often lose control of his emotions, not like Max does, but when he does, he’s far more disruptive than Max. Max gets everything out all at once, and Antoine lets it all simmer until it erupts out of him. He keeps himself so tightly contained, even when he’s spilling out all over Max’s head. And this is definitely a break of some kind; Max has been seeing the signs of it for weeks without realising it. 

Antoine shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m going to send you out; this is going to be a bad one.”

“I’m your soulmate,” Max protests, and he can see the way Antoine’s movements stutter. 

They don’t tend to say it out loud much, but that’s what makes it such an effective weapon.

Antoine’s eyes flicker away from the storm and land on Max. Max could drown in those eyes faster than he could drown in the water they’re in. “Then we’ll both go out,” he says, and holds out a hand to Max. 

Max can taste how grateful Antoine is, but doesn’t say a word, grabbing Antoine’s head instead and pulling when Antoine does, until they land in a calmer, nicer scene, where they can actually talk.

“Sometimes, you’re the worst,” Max grumbles. 

They’re in a treehouse that isn’t meant for two hockey players; it’s a close fit but not unwelcome. If Max were a little braver, he’d let himself lean against Antoine like he really wants to. Antoine looks vaguely amused, but this has to be his space; Max has heard stories about this treehouse for years.

“I don’t think I’m the person that’s supposed to be here,” Max says, succeeding in not sounding pissy about it. 

Antoine blinks at him. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I mean, yeah,” Max says, and ignores the warmth filling his chest. 

Antoine shrugs. “I’m sure no one would mind; it’s not even the real treehouse. It’s not like you need a password or anything.”

“So, what, it’s a treehouse just for us?” Max asks. 

“What else would it be?” Antoine asks, knocking his knees against Max’s, completely unaware of how he’s breaking Max. “How are things, Max?”

“We were literally texting until you fell asleep!”

“So you can tell me what I missed by falling asleep,” Antoine smirks.

Max doesn’t deserve this. Max literally does not deserve any of this. “You missed nothing. Literally, you missed maybe two texts, and it’s because you were staying up late, like an idiot.”

Antoine knocks their shoulders together and leaves his there, pressing Max between the treehouse wall and himself. “I do these things out of love,” he says, clear-eyed but smiling, and it hits Max where it hurts, like he’s just been slammed into the boards.

* * *

Max stares at Antoine, who is staring back at him, equally confused. Somehow, they managed to appear together, which means--well. Honestly, the scene filling in around them is kind of--

“Wow,” Antoine says, wide-eyed, staring at the trees. They're pink and puffy, more like clouds than trees. 

“Is this--” Max gets out, before the words die in his throat, because they’re moving. The trees are sort of rippling, and as Max watches, a breeze starts up and the trees are shedding pink everywhere.

Antoine looks a little breathless. “Cherry blossoms, Max.”

Antoine's delight is bursting across Max's head, so Max doesn’t say anything, just stands and lets the petals fall in the wind. It’s even more unbearable than any of the other romantic moments they’ve had before, and almost like it’s picking up on his thoughts, the breeze picks up, engulfing them in a storm of pink petals. They’re strewn through Antoine’s hair but he doesn’t seem to mind, his eyes flickering between the trees and Max.

“This is me,” Max says, finally. Antoine is weather; Antoine is hurricanes and lightning storms and tornadoes, the fist of an angry god in the middle of their heads. Antoine is not giant clouds of cherry blossom petals, gently swirling around them.

“Sure is,” Antoine says, chirpily, and when Max turns his head to look at him, Antoine’s smirking at him already. 

“You just--let me?” he says, unsure, because he definitely has no control over what is, even now, happening right in front of their faces. 

“I do weather, Max.”

“I know that,” Max huffs. 

“Where do you think the wind came from, thin air?” Antoine asks. “Of course I let you, I--”

“You knew?” Caught between terror and hope, his heart is battering itself against his ribs. 

Antoine shakes his head, knocking out soft pink petals with the gesture. “Not for sure. Not till now. Was that sunset for me?”

Everyone else around them knows. Every single person who knows them, who knows Max, knows, and here Antoine is, asking, because he still thinks the answer could be no. Everyone else already knows it never will be, knows Max has always been Antoine’s. 

“It’s always for you,” Max says, almost flinching at how it comes out so loud and clear, a challenge. Nothing to misinterpret or take back, but Antoine knew the half of it, so he’d know the whole. Max isn’t one to hide things; he never has been. “You know how my thoughts feel in your head, and you didn’t know?”

“I didn’t want to hope.” 

Antoine says it like it isn’t heartbreaking, but Max is caught somewhere that feels a lot like grief, the way the pieces are filling in. “But--” 

“We are already like _ this _,” Antoine says, lacing his fingers together almost violently, coming together in a sound Max can hear. “We are the punchline to a hundred jokes about being too tangled together. I didn’t want to hope or to put the thought in your head if it wasn’t there already.”

“I don’t like to hide things from you,” Max says, and he feels so small in the face of the whirlwind of emotions Antoine is practically radiating, but this is where he’s most comfortable. He’s always loved Antoine. It’s always been that simple for him. 

“I know,” Antoine says, gentling again. Antoine is so very like the storms he creates, unpredictable as anything. "I know." 

He drags his hands down his face, leaves them there, looks at Max from between his fingers. “So what now?”

“What now?” Max echoes. 

He pauses to regroup, and think about it. Both their minds have betrayed their feelings, Max far more obviously than Antoine, but then again, that’s how they’ve always been. “I mean, nothing’s changed. I’m still in love with you. You just actually know it now.”

Antoine’s hands are still covering his face, but his ears are bright red, so Max knows he’s hiding a heavy blush. Max is pretty sure he’s blushing too, but that’s more because he doesn’t think he ever stopped. He’s trying his best to stay in the moment, not in their heads, because he doesn’t--he knows Antoine is usually self-contained, but he has a feeling Antoine isn’t, hasn’t been the last few months, and he refuses to break into Antoine’s privacy.

“I didn’t know,” Antoine says, and Max is about to say something in response, about how he knows now, had Max declare it out loud, unmistakable for anything else, when Antoine continues speaking, his hands slipping down his face. He is blushing, faintly, but his face looks so serious. “I didn’t know I loved you this much. And I kind of knew I wasn’t the kind of person who falls in love.”

Max cocks his head, because this is the part where Antoine’s lost him. Antoine loves everything so fiercely, his family with unwavering loyalty, hockey with euphoric joy, Max with intense dedication. 

Antoine has a ghost of a smile on his face. “I didn’t say I don’t love things. I just--I never fell in love. I never got it, you know? I already love everything, I didn’t think I could love anything more than I do. And I don’t think I do, but I love you in every way that counts.”

Max loves Antoine so much that it hurts him some days. He doesn’t think he knows at all what Antoine is talking about, but then again, he’s never had reason to doubt that Antoine loves him.

“I know,” Max says simply. “I’ve never doubted that.”

“Everyone else would say we shouldn’t,” Antoine says. The breeze has died completely, but the two of them are still standing on a carpet of cherry blossom petals that only exists because they both want the same thing.

Max rolls his eyes. “You’ve never cared about what other people wanted. Neither of us have, otherwise we wouldn’t fucking have had bond separation.”

“Today in: continuing activities that would scandalise people if we ever told them the whole truth,” Antoine says, and he’s smirking, because he absolutely was setting Max up. “How do you feel about kicking it up a notch and being boyfriends?”

“Sounds okay to me,” Max says, and reaches out for Antoine’s hand, like he has so many thousands of times before. 


End file.
